Dps As Healer

[Miste]

These are just arbitrary numbers, but if AST and SCH's were able to do approximately 500 HPS and WHM was able to do 700 HPS and the content only required 450 HPS, would you still be opposed to a lower healer potency for higher utility despite still being able to handle the HPS requirements just fine?

Why should one healer have a harder time healing than the others though? The co-healer will also have to deal with your lower healing potency and it makes the content not only harder for you but for them and the rest of your group. You need to be more skilled at the game and the job the lower your healing potency goes even if it is still above minimum the devs created it for.

Most players in this game choose the path of least resistance and if one or two out of the three healer jobs available is weaker at their primary purpose then they start getting locked out of groups like when HW first launched and AST was too weak at their heals.

To lower the healing potency for AST and SCH means that the devs would have to tune the fights around the lower potency healers. This would make WHM have way more healing than necessary and therefore way easier for them to heal. What does this accomplish exactly? People keep saying WHM has more healing than necessary (but lacking utility) right now but this just adds onto that and WHM would still be lacking utility and would have just useless excess healing power.

Either that or basically you guys just want the main compositions to be WHM + SCH or WHM + AST instead of what we have now which is SCH + WHM or SCH + AST because if they cut AST and SCH healing potency to be below WHM than most groups won't do SCH + AST since that is both the low potency healers and less safe and you would need more skill to do it without failing.

Likewise, we cannot use your claim of constantly seeing White Mages in Savage pugs because it's entirely anecdotal.

That's fine. I admit I shouldn't have used the word never it was incorrect. Only SE can say whether or not WHMs are not being allowed into groups enough because they are the only ones with the statistics. In my experience I've never seen it happen and while it is possible it happens sometimes nerfing AST healing potency isn't the way to fix it. You don't need to crap on AST to fix WHM.

For comparison sake, the DPS roles are not made equal nor are tanks. Monks pull higher personal DPS over their melee counterparts and Warrior vastly outperforms Paladin or Dark Knight in raw DPS. Why couldn't this apply to healers?

It seems like they are planning to change WAR from what SE said recently about it. So they actually seem to be heading into homogenization whether certain people like it or not.

You can also see this with the AST Nocturnal buffs recently. Most compositions are SCH + AST or SCH + WHM and SE wants AST + WHM to be good enough as well so they keep trying to make people use that composition by making Nocturnal stronger.

[Ghishlain]

Why should one healer have a harder time healing than the others though? The co-healer will also have to deal with your lower healing potency and it makes the content not only harder for you but for them and the rest of your group. You need to be more skilled at the game and the job the lower your healing potency goes even if it is still above minimum the devs created it for.

Most players in this game choose the path of least resistance and if one or two out of the three healer jobs available is weaker at their primary purpose then they start getting locked out of groups like when HW first launched and AST was too weak at their heals.

To lower the healing potency for AST and SCH means that the devs would have to tune the fights around the lower potency healers. This would make WHM have way more healing than necessary and therefore way easier for them to heal. What does this accomplish exactly? People keep saying WHM has more healing than necessary (but lacking utility) right now but this just adds onto that and WHM would still be lacking utility and would have just useless excess healing power.

Either that or basically you guys just want the main compositions to be WHM + SCH or WHM + AST instead of what we have now which is SCH + WHM or SCH + AST because if they cut AST and SCH healing potency to be below WHM than most groups won't do SCH + AST since that is both the low potency healers and less safe and you would need more skill to do it without failing.

I was playing more devil's advocate than anything else with my post. I personally don't mind the lower potency as long as the utility provided is powerful (IE, AST's 3.0 heal kit combined with their 3.4 utility kit - probably keep the changes to Lightspeed, Synestra, and Collective Unconsciousness too) as long as they can meet the proper checks. Then I would leave it up to the players to decide what they want to do - safer healing for longer fights or shorter fights with the potential to skip mechanics that'll make healing easier (assuming they maintain current battle content design).

The key thing to me is maintaining uniqueness of each healer while ensuring they're viability. Unfortunately AST's viability was questionable at the onset of 3.0 due to (1) AST's kit and (2) the high tuning of Gordias. Since 3.0, both of these items have changed dramatically. If you took AST's kit as I spoke in the parenthesis, I bet they would do just fine in the 3.4 Creator tier.

And yes, while it's true there will always be a maximum optimized composition, I think there will be enough midcore groups out there to tackle content with any composition they desire as long as it's clear they have the chance to clear it.

To me the largest detriment to taking a WHM right now is that it's too similar to AST (or rather, AST's kit was made to mimic WHM's kit far too well) and thus without any defining trait, WHM gets left in the dust for a clearly superior choice.

My own thought is making WHM healing so powerful that you either go 2 Tank / 5 DPS / WHM or 2 Tank / 4 DPS / AST + SCH though some of the ideas mentioned in another thread are suitable to me too - someone mentioned each tier of Aero providing a different debuff that increase specific damage types which I like a lot too.

[Miste]

My own thought is making WHM healing so powerful that you either go 2 Tank / 5 DPS / WHM

I definitely won't ever agree with your ideas then :x

That's a terrible idea. It completely removes a healer slot because WHM healing is so powerful? You aren't serious with this right? :/

You think AST is broken right now cause of Balance Cards? All groups will go the 5 DPS route since it adds far more DPS than any other composition.

So after this you might as well delete SCH and AST from the game and change the game party composition to 2 tanks, 5 dps, and 1 healer for all content.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

My own thought is making WHM healing so powerful that you either go 2 Tank / 5 DPS / WHM

No, no, no. Now I'm with Miste on this one. We have seen exactly what happens when you design content where one of the roles isn't necessary. Zurvan EX is a mess because the off tank has nothing to do, thus people omit them for an extra DPS and expect to skip Soar. If White Mage could solo heal content, you'd have no reason whatsoever to ever bring another healer since they couldn't possibly contribute what a dedicated fifth DPS would. If they happened, I guarantee even casual raiders would push for White Mage only groups.

[Nerisu]

With all this talk about healers only wanting to heal I sure wish they heal more in pvp.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

My own thought is making WHM healing so powerful that you either go 2 Tank / 5 DPS / WHM

What? No. No no no that would be terrible. The goal is to make healers balanced while giving WHM and AST both unique identities.

This however, is just breaking the balance amongst healers. NO ONE is asking for WHM to be so powerful of a healer that it let's you bring a 5th DPS. That is the very definition of broken and unbalanced.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

That's fine. I admit I shouldn't have used the word never it was incorrect. Only SE can say whether or not WHMs are not being allowed into groups enough because they are the only ones with the statistics. In my experience I've never seen it happen and while it is possible it happens sometimes nerfing AST healing potency isn't the way to fix it. You don't need to crap on AST to fix WHM.

Fair enough. I also didn't intend to apply FFlogs is the end all be all. Just something to glance at to notice potential trends. Our experiences likely differ because of our datacenters. I hear Primal is much less min/maxed focused. Aether... is, xD

Why should one healer have a harder time healing than the others though?

To properly compensate for the utility they bring. If healers were balanced in such a way, you are then making a choice between higher overall damage while putting greater pressure on your DPS and tanks to perform well over a safer raid with comparably less damage. The former allows easier mechanic skips whereas the latter better ensures you survive. At the moment, it boils down to "which two healers work the best together."

It seems like they are planning to change WAR from what SE said recently about it. So they actually seem to be heading into homogenization whether certain people like it or not.

While changes hopefully make PLD/DRK a more viable comp, it would be entirely boring design if all three tanks performed nearly identically. The issue currently isn't Warrior being the superior OT but that it has literally no drawbacks. If I recall, the devs even admitted liking the idea Paladin is better suited for psychical based fights whereas Dark Knight favours magic. If that philosophy were applied to healers, it might play out as noted above.

The supposed idea between each healer's identity is:

White Mage: Raw healing; high base damage; poor MP sustainability
Scholar: Phenomenal sustainability; strong support mitigation; weaker base damage and healing
Astro: Excellent utility; balanced everything else

If all three healers are homogenized, it more or less becomes "what animations do you like better?" I'm not saying it wouldn't work. I, personally, would find it boring though.

[Ghishlain]

I definitely won't ever agree with your ideas then :x

That's a terrible idea. It completely removes a healer slot because WHM healing is so powerful? You aren't serious with this right? :/

You think AST is broken right now cause of Balance Cards? All groups will go the 5 DPS route since it adds far more DPS than any other composition.

So after this you might as well delete SCH and AST from the game and change the game party composition to 2 tanks, 5 dps, and 1 healer for all content.

No, no, no. Now I'm with Miste on this one. We have seen exactly what happens when you design content where one of the roles isn't necessary. Zurvan EX is a mess because the off tank has nothing to do, thus people omit them for an extra DPS and expect to skip Soar. If White Mage could solo heal content, you'd have no reason whatsoever to ever bring another healer since they couldn't possibly contribute what a dedicated fifth DPS would. If they happened, I guarantee even casual raiders would push for White Mage only groups.

That's fine~ Everyone is entitled to their opinion after all While it is a personal wish I also don't foresee it happening either because having consistent design constraints means it's easier to design content too. Building and enforcing a 2/2/4 setup as best as possible will mean overall better content with less balance issues too.

Healer Balance feels completely out of whack at this time and we're so close to an expansion that I'm curious to see what S-E will do. Unfortunately my expectations are fairly low given how badly I feel they've botched the AST file. :/

[EDIT] And yes, my request is perfectly serious - but I can also appreciate the balance required to maintain this would be fairly like balancing on a razor's edge. Effectively SCH + AST combination would have to be able to output enough utility and DPS to match a fifth DPS and a WHM would essentially be contributing 0 additional DPS while maintaining party health in a raid scenario. While it would be possible to remotely balance this in a savage raid tier, balancing it for more casual content (24-player and 4-player DFs) would be all but impossible. Even if it were balanced in a 8-player savage scenario, one small shift in a direction would probably throw that out entirely.

I don't see my own desires reaching fruition but I don't mind dreaming and expressing it either

[Miste]

Because that one healer offers more than the other that ONLY heals.

My comment was ONLY about healing potency not the combination of healing potency and utility. No healer should have a harder time at their primary function.

These are the things I can agree with:
Nerf ASTs utility
Buff WHMs utility (could make it something unique to WHM I am sure SOMETHING can be created)

These are things I will not ever agree with:
Nerfing any healer's healing potency to be weaker than the other healers.

You'll NEVER change my mind so honestly no point in continuing which is why I stopped replying to you.

The former allows easier mechanic skips whereas the latter better ensures you survive.

Which means you will only see ASTs in the top tier/hardcore skilled player groups. Anyone who wants to play an AST in midcore arena will likely be left out.

Midcore/Average players will almost always take survivability instead of risky heals. Most players except the top tier will always take the easiest and safest way to a clear because speed/DPS numbers don't usually matter to them as long as clearing is possible; and mechanic skipping isn't even a viable option for most midcore groups even with AST buffs. There are full i270 groups with an AST in the party that still can't skip mechanics in A11S.

Zurvan EX is a good example of how the community's mind works. Skipping soar is safer so they almost always try to do that method. Tank LBing second soar is safer so even though they could do more damage to the boss they just LB that instead to survive. WAR's get locked out of parties because the safest and easiest way to a clear is to solo tank and WAR cannot survive demon claw while DRK/PLD can.

It is very easy to find reasons to ostracize a specific job if they cannot do something which increases clear chances and while I understand this also applies to WHM lack of utility I agree with adding utility to WHM to remove that issue.

In general I don't agree with anything that lowers any healer's healing potency. To me it is imbalanced and will cause rifts in the community because people don't like risk and people will start locking certain healers out of the groups just like what happened with AST at 3.0 because of their weak heals.

So we might as well agree to disagree because I have my own logic set already and nothing will be changing it unless SE can show me it will somehow work.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Midcore/Average players will almost always take survivability instead of risky heals. Most players except the top tier will always take the easiest and safest way to a clear because speed/DPS numbers don't usually matter to them as long as clearing is possible; and mechanic skipping isn't even a viable option for most midcore groups even with AST buffs. There are full i270 groups with an AST in the party that still can't skip mechanics in A11S.

Zurvan EX is a good example of how the community's mind works. Skipping soar is safer so they almost always try to do that method. Tank LBing second soar is safer so even though they could do more damage to the boss they just LB that instead to survive. WAR's get locked out of parties because the safest and easiest way to a clear is to solo tank and WAR cannot survive demon claw while DRK/PLD can.

It is very easy to find reasons to ostracize a specific job if they cannot do something which increases clear chances and while I understand this also applies to WHM lack of utility I agree with adding utility to WHM to remove that issue.

In general I don't agree with anything that lowers any healer's healing potency. To me it is imbalanced and will cause rifts in the community because people don't like risk and people will start locking certain healers out of the groups just like what happened with AST at 3.0 because of their weak heals.

So we might as well agree to disagree because I have my own logic set already and nothing will be changing it unless SE can show me it will somehow work.

Given the push towards higher DPS, I have to wonder if survivability would pull ahead. Perhaps we classify midcore groups differently since what I would attribute to midcore is pushing mechanics and high DPS whereas hardcore is dedicated to the current meta, speed killing and world prog.

In any case, we likely won't agree. Nonetheless, I do appreciate the back and forth o different perspectives.